BLOOMIN' IDIOT – AT 7:07 P.M. ET:  What has happened to Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York?  In his first two terms he was a competent, if boring mayor.  Now, in his third – made possible by a waiver of the two-term limit – he acts like his imperial majesty.

First, he endorses the mosque at Ground Zero and declares from on high that anyone who opposes it should be "ashamed" of himself, alienating most of the country and even his own city.  Now he travels to Pennsylvania to endorse Democrat Joe Sestak, a supreme nonentity, against Republican Pat Toomey, in the race for a U.S. Senate seat.  Sestak, of course, also endorses the mosque.  Sestak is a former Navy vice admiral who says that he fought for "constitutional rights" during his service career.

I'm sure that a mosque at Ground Zero was one of the "rights" that caused Navy men to rally 'round the flag.  Yeah, right.

Sestak's Navy career ended under a cloud, but he refuses to release records that would illuminate the problem.

Sestak has had some odd associations with Arab groups since becoming a U.S. congressman representing a district in eastern Pennsylvania.  He is not considered a friend by pro-Israel forces.  We don't know if he's ever brought up religious tolerance to his Middle Eastern pals.

What strikes me is the utter arrogance of those who favor the mosque.  There are, in the United States, disputes about the placement of houses of worship all the time, but I've never heard one of these worthies get involved to defend "religious freedom."  There was a hot dispute involving a church just two months ago in Princeton, New Jersey, inside the New York City region.  Did we see Mike Bloomberg all agitated?

And we learned today that the only church actually destroyed in the 9-11 attacks was a Greek Orthodox church, which wants to rebuild.  Thus far it hasn't gotten permission from the Port Authority of New York, and negotiations are deadlocked.  Where is the support from anguished lovers of the First Amendmen?  (We would like to see some help from this crowd when other First Amendment rights, like freedom of speech, are threatened, especially on college campuses that enact "speech codes" to be sure students are trained in political correctness.)

There are no actual "rights" involved in the Ground Zero dispute.  The right of Muslims to practice their religion is not being threatened.  There are mosques all over New York.  However, religious freedom has never included the automatic right to build a physical structure in a particular place. 

This dispute is about culture.  It's a conflict between cultural elites who believe they're being very "intellectual and multicultural" to favor the mosque, and "ordinary" American citizens, who know raw insensitivity when they see it.  The elites may get the mosque.  The citizens will get the elites.

August 17, 2010